ICOM-CC
18th Triennial Conference
2017 Copenhagen
THEORY AND HISTORY OF CONSERVATION
JOYCE HILL STONER*
University of Delaware
Newark DE, USA
Winterthur Museum
Winterthur DE, USA
jstoner@winterthur.org
www.artcons.udel.edu/faculty/ud-faculty/jhstoner
MURIEL VERBEECK-BOUTIN
University of Liège
Liège, Belgium
muriel.verbeeck@ceroart.org
web.philo.ulg.ac.be/aap/muriel-verbeeck/
*Author for correspondence
KEYWORDS: Paul Philippot, Cesare Brandi,
phenomenology, patina, conservation training,
cleaning of paintings
ABSTRACT
Paul Philippot (1925–2016) was an influential
conservation theoretician and author in addi-
tion to serving as an important leader or col-
laborator with major conservation institutions
in Europe (ICR, ICCROM, IIC, UNESCO, ICOM, etc.).
He was an art historian born into a Belgian fam-
ily of conservator-restorers. The authors were
privileged to interview him in 1997, 2009 and
2015. Verbeeck discusses Philippot’s relation to
and reinterpretation of the philosophy of Cesare
Brandi, his definition of restoration as both an
intellectual judgment and a critical act, and his
influence on the establishment of an interdis-
ciplinary curriculum for pioneer training pro-
grams. Stoner describes Philippot’s emphasis
on the impact of language on communication
of philosophical concepts in his 1997 interview
in addition to key points in his publications once
they were available in English, especially his de-
scription of patina as the normal effect that time
has on material and the search for equilibrium
in cleaning paintings.
The impact of Paul Philippot
on the theory and history of
conservation/restoration
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this paper is to discuss the legacy of Paul Philippot, highlighting
the personality of this historical figure in addition to his philosophy,
publications, and impact on conservation training. Paul Philippot
died in January 2016. He was one of the last surviving participants
of the mid-20th-century establishment of the international profession
of conservation. For nearly 40 years he worked at the highest levels,
participated in significant projects, collaborated with theoreticians and
practitioners; he often served as their voice. He published regularly, and
was interviewed by both authors of this paper on different occasions.
During these interviews, other facets of his extraordinary intelligence
were revealed, and it is in this more intimate, more selective context we
wish to present some facets of his impact on the profession.
BIOGRAPHY
Paul Philippot was born in 1925 in Brussels, Belgium, into a family
of restorers: he was the son of restorer Albert Philippot and grandson
of Jef Vandervecken, known as a skilled forger/connoisseur of surface
appearances. Due to the new social mobility of the middle class, Paul
was the first person in his family to enter university. He first studied
law and then followed an art history curriculum, culminating in a thesis
under the direction of Germain Bazin, curator of the Louvre. His career
soon became international; under the leadership of Paul Coremans,
founder of the IRPA (Institut Royal du Patrimoine Artistique), Philippot
collaborated with the Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome and the
circles of IIC (International Institute for Conservation), ICOM, and
ICCROM (International Center for Conservation, Rome). First he assisted
Harold Plenderleith, and then he himself became the ICCROM director
(Figure 1). At the end of the 1970s, Paul Philippot returned to Brussels
where he taught at the university, while still participating as an expert
in many projects financed by key organizations such as UNESCO. This
essay discusses Philippot’s publications incorporating the philosophy
of Cesare Brandi, restoration as a critical act, scientific understanding
of materials, and special emphasis on the key importance of art history,
intellectual humanism, and aesthetics.
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Figure 1. [From left to right] Giorgio Torraca,
Paul Philippot, Vic Hanson, and Harold
Plenderleith; Vic Hanson, conservation scientist
at Winterthur Museum, demonstrating an
early x-ray fluorescence unit to a visiting
committee from ICCROM, in 1969. Photograph
courtesy of Winterthur Museum
Figure 2. Cesare Brandi’s inscription to Paul
Philippot on the title page of his influential
book, Carmine o della pittura. Photograph by
Muriel Verbeeck, 2015
PHILIPPOT, INTERPRETER OF BRANDI
Between December 1949 and January 1950, Paul Philippot interned at
the ICR. The Istituto was founded in 1939 by Cesari Brandi; Brandi
was 43 in 1949 when he met 24-year-old Philippot. The two men were a
generation apart but were both classical humanists with the same intellectual
grounding in law and aesthetic. Before arriving in Rome, Philippot had
read Brandi’s Carmine o della pittura (1945), a work he considered to be
fundamental and which outlined the phenomenological thesis of Brandi’s
philosophy (Figure 2). It was only in Le due vie (Laterza, Bari, 1966) and
Teoria generale della critica (Einaudi, Turin, 1974) that the Italian put
the finishing touches to his aesthetic and critical thought, anchoring it in
the most contemporary trends and creating a dialogue with structuralism
and semiology. When he translated Les deux voies into French in 1989,
Philippot heaped praise onto this aspect of the master’s work, which he
considered to be his major contribution. However, in his introduction
he stressed that it is the Teoria (1963) that “is the starting point for his
reflection on the work of art’s reception and the special arrangements for
its historicity.” Since 1951, Philippot constantly repeated, developed,
and interpreted these two points. He was, ultimately, the person who
explained and sought to clarify a deep, complicated or ambiguous thought
or text, but was also an interpreter in the artistic sense of the word, one
who personally translates an author’s thought and intentions, the one who
brings a play or a score to life.
Let us consider Philippot’s first written work, his master’s thesis (1951)
entitled, The ICR, its organization and its approach to the restoration and
conservation of paintings. The text was composed of three parts: 1) the
administrative organization of the ICR; 2) the position of the ICR with
regard to issues and challenges related to the restoration of paintings (and
in this section Philippot referenced Brandi’s theories, pp. 296–302); and 3)
the education and training of restorers and collaborations. In this early
writing, Philippot was synthesizing Brandi’s ideas, yet Brandi’s Teoria
was not published until ten years later. He referred explicitly to three
articles by Brandi: “Restauro,” in the Enciclopedia Italiana; “Il fondamento
teorico del restauro,” in the Bollettino dell’Istituto Centrale del Restauro
(BICR), nº 1, 1950; and “Il ristabilimento dell’unita potenziale dell’opera
d’arte,” in BICR, 1950.
Two of these three articles were published only after Philippot’s stay
in Rome. Therefore, the concepts within Philippot’s thesis must have
been based on direct conservations and interactions with Brandi and then
supplemented by the subsequent articles. Two of the articles of the BICR
are condensed versions of Brandi’s curricula at the architecture school,
and it was likely that the curriculum at the Istituto would incorporate
similar content.
In his thesis, Philippot appears as a fervent, but not unconditional, admirer
of Brandi. He agrees with the innovative theories of the Italian, who is
inspired by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, the Gestalt psychology
and later on, John Dewey (explicitly quoted in the Teoria). For Brandi,
as for Philippot, a work of art only exists when it is recognized by the
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consciousness. In its materiality, it is a piece of marble, wood, or canvas,
but it is its recognition by the mind as an aesthetic object, a piece of
art, that gives it a distinct status. This recognition does not take place
once and for all, but every time the work is experienced. Its historicity
is always twofold: marked by the time of its creation and by that of its
reception (or more specifically by each of the moments of its reception).
What Philippot sees with great foresight, is the impact of such a concept
on the practice of restoration; it is possible to implement techniques and
procedures that lead to this recognition of the degraded work, as a work
of art. Tratteggio and coloring gaps must be put back into the context of
this phenomenological approach and Gestalt theory.
Despite his enthusiasm for these innovative theories, Philippot differentiates
himself from the Master with regard to the restorer’s position, maintained
by the Italian as strictly an executioner (the critical aspect being the
responsibility of the art historian). Philippot’s family history makes him more
open to the idea of the restorer’s participation, not only in the judgment,
but also in the critical act.
RESTORATION/CONSERVATION: A CRITICAL ACT
Let us look at the Greek concept of crinein, which means “to distinguish,
choose, estimate, appreciate,” and also to “decide, separate the bad from
the good, to judge.” Brandi mentions critical judgment as the process
of the work of art’s “recognition.” For the Italian, this is an intellectual
process, considered to be the province of the art historian. According
to him, material restoration is a practical activity which closely ensues
from it, but is clearly distinct from it. In his eyes, the restorer remains an
“agent of execution.”
In his master’s thesis, Philippot immediately distanced himself from Brandi,
rejecting this form of subordination of the restorer. He transposed critical
judgment to a practical level, referring to restoration as a critical act –
which would also be the title of a subsequent paper, published in 1995.
To defend his position, he quoted George Stout’s 1950 paper on art and
science published by the university in Brussels: “The man who does the
work is the man who must know what he is doing. His knowledge is the
direct guide to procedure, and it is changed and augmented as the work
goes on.” Philippot stated forcefully in 1951: “The restorer is not a tool.”
PHILIPPOT AND THE TRAINING OF RESTORERS
Philippot affirmed the interdisciplinary concept for the profession of
conservator-restorer and proposed a solid theoretical foundation, both
humanistic and scientific, for training for the field. He wrote many articles
on this topic which have been translated into various languages. The
first paper, “Réflexions sur le problème de la formation des restaurateurs
de peintures et de sculptures,” was published in French in Studies in
Conservation in 1960, and later translated into German and Spanish. In
the first version of the article, based on the same quote by Stout, there is
a stirring argument to defend restoration, the restorative act as a critical
act: “The job of restorer can in no way be regarded as the mere execution
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Figure 3. Paul Philippot and his wife, Annie
Reniers-Philippot, a Flemish philosopher
specializing in phenomenology. Photograph
by Muriel Verbeeck, 2015
Figure 4. Paul Philippot with his library.
Photograph by Muriel Verbeeck, 2015
Figure 5. Paul Philippot at his desk.
Photograph by Muriel Verbeeck, 2015
of instructions defined entirely outside of it by the critic or the laboratory.
. . . The thought must always be there on alert, a thought that controls,
interprets and adapts, i.e., continually creating because, like an aesthetic
and technical problem, it resides within the work that it directs. . . . The
best instructions will mean nothing, if the person that carries them out
does not actually accept them in order to portray them.”
Consequently, for Philippot, conservators must be educated and trained in art
history and science while maintaining the know-how and craftsmanship of
the practice. A training program must choose the best candidates through a
process of rigorous selection observing hands-on workshops and supervised
internships. The second stage should introduce historical and scientific
education. “Intellectualization and abstraction can run the risk of atrophying
the ability to think in action that is essential to the craft and practice.”
International collaboration, comparison of different approaches, and the
mixing of cultures and experiences were seen as necessary to stimulate
and improve restoration practice. The training at ICR served as the first
model for this approach. In 1959, Paul Philippot became vice president of
ICCROM and extended his ideas about training to that venue. His 1960
Studies in Conservation paper influenced the approach for the curricular
design of conservation training programs from the New York University
Conservation Center (beginning in 1960) to the IFROA in Paris (beginning
in 1977).
The authors mentioned in the introduction that they both had the honor
and privilege to interview Paul Philippot in person at his home. Muriel
Verbeeck interviewed him twice, in 1999 and 2015 (Figures 3–5). The first
time, he had agreed to preface a special issue of CerOArt, dedicated to
young restorers. The second, he provided further explanations regarding
a lecture that was to be given at the Sorbonne in Paris and clarified his
role in disseminating the thought of Brandi. Despite his advanced age,
he was a man with an extraordinary lucidity, with an impeccable memory
for details and a rare mastery of concepts and language. His clarity of
expression, his pedagogical sense made the most dry content become lucid.
When asked the question of why he had not followed in the footsteps of
his father and grandfather, and had never become a restorer himself, he
confessed that his hand did not obey his mind; this is understandable,
because his intelligence was truly extraordinary. He was not only a great
intellectual but also someone who was able to translate practical examples
into theory; it is this process that today still allows the principles to be
taught and empiricism to be avoided, which was his primary concern.
THE IDEAS OF PHILIPPOT IN THE UNITED STATES
Joyce Hill Stoner interviewed Paul Philippot in his home in Chiny, in
the forests of Belgium, two hours south of Brussels, in July of 1997
(Figure 6). She considers the interview a transformative experience for her
understanding of painting conservation and her continued teaching of young,
aspiring paintings conservators. Stoner had interviewed and studied with
John Brealey in the 1970s and early ’80s after he left London and arrived
in the United States; she was struck by the similarity of the Philippot/
Brealey approaches to the understanding of the impact of the passage of
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Figure 6. Paul Philippot in his home in Chiny.
Photograph by Joyce Hill Stoner, 1997
Figure 7. The Moras demonstrating
tratteggio at the Getty Museum. Photograph
by Joyce Hill Stoner, 1985
time on the materials of a work of art, the metaphysical understanding of
each painting and its creator, the importance of scientific understanding
of materials, and the conservator-restorer’s profound responsibility at
the critical moment of restoration and intervention. Philippot’s writings
were not generally available to English-speaking audiences until after
the 1984 publication of Conservation of wall paintings (by Laura and
Paolo Mora and Paul Philippot, in English; see Mora, Mora and Philippot
1984) and the translation of Paul Philippot’s publications on philosophy of
historic preservation, restoration of paintings (written with his father Albert
Philippot), and, most importantly, the publication of “The idea of patina
and the cleaning of paintings” in Readings in conservation: Historical
and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage by the
Getty Conservation Institute in 1996 (Stanley Price et al. 1996).
In the 1997 interview Paul Philippot noted that he was very impressed
with the Getty Readings book and discussed the problems of translating
sophisticated concepts. He commented that Brandi had “a way of thinking
that is so deeply rooted in the Italian philosophical tradition that a correct
approach to Brandi takes a long time.” Both Philippot and the Moras (in
an interview in 1998, shortly before Paolo Mora died, see also Figure 7)
discussed how “closely a way of thinking is linked to a language and the
importance of languages in transmitting thought. . . . Translation always
changes something and it never works with professional translators, because
they don’t really understand what it is about.” For the Wall Paintings
book, Philippot noted that the three of them working together was “a love
story,” and that they carried out “consecutive translation” themselves; he
called it “an enormous work.”
David Bomford introduced the term “positivism” for the Helmut Ruhemann
approach to “complete cleaning” in the title for one of his Slade lectures
(1996–97), “Picture cleaning and positivism.” Philippot agreed with
this concept and said that Ruhemann, at the National Gallery, London,
“considered only the purely material, analytical aspect. . . . A work of
art is not the total of its materials, but a unity that has been created
by the artist, and has had its evolution through time.” He continued
that “the positivistic approach is like considering a poem as a total of
separate words, whereas poetry is made of the relations between those
words, and from that relation comes something that is in no separate
word, obviously.” Bomford titled the opposite pole “the metaphysical,”
whereas Philippot said he preferred the term historico critico. Philippot’s
concepts of the historico critico were compatible with John Brealey’s
aesthetic, interpretive, and metaphysical approach to the restoration
of paintings; together, these concepts brought about a sea change to
approaches to paintings conservation in the United States in the end
of the 20th century. Similar concepts had also been defined in articles
and interviews with John Brealey (after he arrived to teach and treat
paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, in 1975, and
was widely interviewed by the press), in the publication of the translated
Mora/Philippot book in 1984, the Getty Readings book with translations
of Philippot’s philosophical articles in 1996, and lectures by David
Bomford about the positivistic and the metaphysical 1996–97.
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In a key article, translated in the Getty Readings book but written originally
in 1966, Philippot referred to patina as the “normal effect that time
has on material,” whereas in 1963 Ruhemann had considered “patina”
on paintings to be essentially a distracting and discolored coating of
varnish. Philippot considered varnish to be only one element of patina,
along with the craquelure and the change of refractive index; the patina
becomes a humanistic (historico critico) encapsulation of the passage
of time and all of the experiences undergone by the painting, akin to
the concepts of phenomenology. The original viewing experience is no
longer attainable.
The patina of oil paint also may have a surface luster that is analogous
to a skin, a skin that can be pierced by injudicious cleaning. In the Wall
Paintings book, the Moras illustrated a cross section with the patina
depicted as a very real top layer that requires its own special inpainting
approach when disrupted, usually with watercolors. The Moras noted that
“wear of the patina causes a discontinuity of the surface which alters the
luster of the painting, and consequently, the depth of the tones and the
spatial unity of the image” (1984).
According to Philippot: Cleaning then becomes the search for an achievable
equilibrium that will be most faithful to the original unity . . . the solution
must be arrived at on a case-by-case basis. The cleaning of a painting can
thus never be conceived of as a purely material operation and as such,
‘objective.’” The painting has undergone change as time has passed, and
the viewer comes with his or her own experiences that impact on the
interaction between the art and its audience. The public brings, according
to Philippot, its own “mental museum,” influenced by “color reproductions,
with their high gloss paper . . . to a point that requires the work of art to
conform to the reproduction.” [This echoes John Richardson’s concerns in
“Crimes against the Cubists” (1983) that conservators sought to convert
original paintings to match the high glossy finish in the plates in art
books to satisfy the “eyes jaded by shiny reproductions.”] In 1960, E.H.
Gombrich had already assigned conservators the responsibility of being
“tone engineers.” Philippot’s compelling and sober summation of the
conservator-restorer’s mission is: taking into account the “present state of
the material of the work,” to seek to “reestablish not an illusory original
state but the state most faithful to the aesthetic unity of the original image”
with subjective, informed, and critical judgment.
CONCLUSION
In his gentle, subjective but highly informed scholarly presence, seasoned by
studies in law and art history in addition to a close relationship with Cesare
Brandi and a father who was an admired and skilled conservator-restorer,
Paul Philippot laid out pioneer concepts for conservation philosophy, the
establishment of conservation training programs, and key concepts for the
approach to the restoration of paintings. He influenced or collaborated
with major conservation leaders, from Rome to Boston. He elegantly
defined the impact of time on the surfaces of paintings and the consequent
intellectual and practical responsibilities of the conservator to preserve
the patina and to reestablish aesthetic unity with critical judgment.
7 ICOM-CC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
18th Triennial Conference
2017 Copenhagen The authors would like to especially thank ICCROM for access to highly
THEORY AND HISTORY OF CONSERVATION useful archival documents.
THE IMPACT OF PAUL PHILIPPOT
ON THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF
CONSERVATION/RESTORATION REFERENCES

BRANDI, C. 1989. Les deux voies de la critique, introduction by Paul Philippot. Brussels:
Marc Vokar.
GOMBRICH, E. 1960. Art and illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation.
London: Pantheon books.
MORA, P., L. MORA, and P. PHILIPPOT. 1984. Conservation of wall paintings. London:
Butterworths.
MORA, P. and L. MORA. 1998. Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation
(FAIC), oral history interview by J.H. Stoner.
PHILIPPOT, P. 2012 (1951). L’Istituto Centrale del Restauro, son organisation et sa position
devant les principaux problèmes de la restauration des peintures, edited and published
by G. Basile. F. Provenzani & C.
PHILIPPOT, P. 1960. Réflexions sur le problème de la formation des restaurateurs de
peintures et de sculptures. Studies in Conservation 5(2): 61–70.
PHILIPPOT, P. 1995. La restauration, acte critique. Recherches Poïétiques 3: 18–25.
PHILIPPOT, P. 1996 (1966). The idea of patina and the cleaning of paintings. In Readings
in conservation: Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural
heritage, eds. N. Stanley Price, M. Kirby Talley Jr., and A. Melucco Vaccaro, 372–76.
Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute. (originally published in French)
PHILIPPOT, P. 1997. Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (FAIC), oral
history interview by J.H. Stoner.
RICHARDSON, J. 1983. Crimes against the Cubists. New York Review of Books 30(10):
32–24.
RUHEMANN, H. 1963. The training of restorers. Recent advances in conservation, ed. G.
Thomson. London: IIC.
SHEPHERD, R. 1997. Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (FAIC), oral
history interview by J.H. Stoner.
STANLEY PRICE, N., M.K. TALLEY, and A.M. VACCARO, eds. 1996. Readings in conservation:
Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. Los
Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute.

How to cite this article:

Stoner, J.H. and M. Verbeeck-Boutin. 2017. The
impact of Paul Philippot on the theory and history of
conservation/restoration. In ICOM-CC 18th Triennial
Conference Preprints, Copenhagen, 4–8 September
2017, ed. J. Bridgland, art. 1908. Paris: International
Council of Museums.